


My Weary Heart Is Wild

by greenstuff



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 06:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18177176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenstuff/pseuds/greenstuff
Summary: Michael spends time with Isobel and comes to a decision about Alex.Spoilers for 1x08





	My Weary Heart Is Wild

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel to A War Is Calling, the Tides Are Turned (https://archiveofourown.org/works/18094940). This will probably make more sense if you read that one first. 
> 
> Title from shovels & rope - after the storm (go listen it's so good)
> 
> I wrote this entire fic on a travel day, mostly on an airplane with a burly jock-looking-dude taking up one of my arm rests. I choose to blame all mistakes and the lack of NSFW content on the fact half my brain was wondering if he was reading as I was writing. Hope you enjoy it despite its many flaws :)

Jesse Manes is leaving Roswell. The thought rattles around in Michael’s brain without quite sinking in. He can still taste Alex on his lips. He can’t quite wrap his brain around that either. Jesse is leaving and Alex came back.

If this is the karmic pay out for Isobel, Michael is not having it. He doesn’t give a fuck about cosmic balance. Isabel is not dying and, if Alex is willing to try, really try, then Michael is all in. Fuck Karma. He’s keeping them both.

The desert is fucking cold at night. The mine provides shelter from the wind, but perpetually hidden from the warmth of the sun the rocks radiate a permanent chill. Michael hefts the bag he hurriedly filled with blankets, sweaters, and acetone in his trailer over one shoulder and picks up his thermos filled with coffee. He and Max didn’t talk after Isobel entered the pod, but Michael knows if Max isn’t in there right now, he’ll be back soon.

Michael has always liked spending time with their pods. He knows Max and Isobel visit less often. Always thought that was because they had a human family. Michael had group homes and crap foster parents who used him for the check or as a punching bag or both. For a brief blip of time he’d had Alex and he’d put aside researching how to leave this planet and focused on music and on the bright shiny future he could have on Earth. But that hadn’t lasted. Jesse Manes saw to that.

The pod chamber feels different tonight. He can taste silver in the air and feel a new energy in the bio electricity radiating from the pods. He wonders if the energy is Isobel herself, or if he’s just feeling the activation of her pod.

“Any chance that duffle is full of food?” Max’s voice is raw and his smile is half assed, but at least he’s talking.

“I have coffee.” Michael crosses the chamber and hands the thermos to Max.

“Thanks.” Max unscrews the lid and takes a gulp straight from the thermos.

Michael sinks to the ground beside him and starts pulling out blankets. “You should go get some sleep. I’ll stay with her. I’m used to sleeping rough.”

Max gives him the patented Max Evans Is Sorry He Got Parents And You Didn’t look; it’s less effective with red rimmed eyes. “I have to work in the morning. I won’t be back until late.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to be.” Michael says with a shrug. “Liz can find me here if she and Kyle need anything.”

“Thanks. I’ll try to bring you some food in the morning, okay?”

Michel doesn’t bother responding. He brought a notebook, his tool box and a flask of equal parts whiskey and acetone, he could pretty much live here. Might have to if Liz and Kyle can’t find a sure way of healing Isobel. There’s no way they’re leaving her alone here unless they absolutely have to.

None of them remember being in the pods, or anything that came before. Michael couldn’t stand it if Isobel somehow was released from her pod and woke alone, afraid, and with no memory of them or her life here. They’re don’t know if their collective amnesia is a side effect of the pods. They don’t really know anything about themselves. But if Isobel emerges from the pod of her own accord, Michael refuses to let her emerge alone. He knows without asking that Max feels the same way. If he’d had any doubts, they would have been erased by the way Max lays a hand on Isobel’s pod and just leans for an endless moment before finally turning and walking away.

Once he’s spread out his blankets, the cave makes a more comfortable bed than his truck ever did. The glow of the pods is comforting and Michael lays back, eyes closed and consciously relaxes into the blankets beneath him. The air is still, but Michael can feel the pulse of energy from the pods resonating with a similar energy imbued in every one of his cells. As tension seeps out of his body, his mind wanders to Isobel held in stasis in their pods.

He can’t believe he didn’t think of silver. He’s never felt grateful for Liz Ortecho before. It’s not a comfortable feeling, but he can’t shake it. If Liz hadn’t been there, if she hadn’t swallowed her own rage and focused on solving the problem and saving Isobel’s life, they wouldn’t be here now. Michael would probably be blackout drunk somewhere far enough from Roswell that no one would notice when he lost control and started ripping cacti from the ground with his mind. Max would be telling his mother and father that Isobel died of liver failure from alcoholism or some other horrible, painful lie.

Liz Ortecho knows everything now. Or she will soon. Liz who managed to manufacture a perfect weapon against them using only a few scrapings of Max’s cells was even now preparing to analyze the very substance that Michael was convinced was the key to their survival for fifty years in stasis. Michael wants to believe Liz won’t do anything to put Max or the rest of them in danger, but trusting her doesn’t come naturally. He hopes Isobel is right about how much Liz loves Max. Can’t imagine another reason for her to try and help Isobel and is still a little afraid that she really isn’t trying to help at all.

She brought in Kyle fucking Valenti. Having to trust Valenti really burns. Michael knows it’s been ten years since prom, but he’s never quite gotten over the way Alex looked that night, chased out of his own prom by Valenti’s pack of bigots.

Alex.

His thoughts always comes back to Alex.

Beautiful, soft, brilliant Alex who knows nothing about any of this. He has to tell him. If they’re going to make this work there can’t be secrets. Michael’s not as strong as Isobel. He could never ask Alex to spend forever with him and then keep him in the dark.

But how can he tell him?

The idea is paralyzing and Michael has no idea how he will find the words. He isn’t afraid of Alex. Not the way he’s afraid of Valenti and even, to a lesser extent, Ortecho. Alex would never tell their secret. He may have returned a war hero, but he’s not one of _them_ , not in any of the ways that matter anyway. Alex is military but he’s also Michael’s. Even when they aren’t together, even in those dark days, weeks, months, years when Michael was sure they never could be again, Alex Manes is his safe space, his home, the one human Michael trusts. The way his bioelectricity resonates with Alex’s is something Michael can’t ignore, write off, or look past. They fit together, jagged pieces made whole. It’s been ten years and nothing has changed.

Alex won’t turn on them, but he might run.

Running is Alex Manes’ specialty. _I joined the air force. I deploy in two weeks. We’re not kids anymore, what I want doesn’t matter. I can’t be with a criminal._ Alex is always trying to run. But one thing is different now, Michael realizes, this time Michael isn’t willing to just let him. They’re both to blame for the decade they spent apart. Maybe at seventeen there was little Michael could have done, but he hadn’t even done that. He’d just bottled it up, nodded and, with a final, salty kiss filled with longing, let the love of his life ship off to the military.

“I’m going to tell him, Isobel.” Michael says to the pods. “You should tell Noah too. We should be able to be honest with the people we love.”

He knows she can’t hear him because she doesn’t come bursting out of her pod to ask him who “him” is or to throttle him for suddenly being on her side about telling Noah after eight years of throwing their promise to never tell anyone in her face.

He falls asleep at some point, soothed by some heady combination of hope and home and finally making a decision. As he always does when he sleeps here, though he hasn’t needed to since high school, Michael dreams of the stars.

…

Max wakes him just before dawn by dropping a paper bag onto Michael’s stomach. “Breakfast delivery.”

Michael blinks awake and then smells bacon and immediately recovers from any irritation he might have felt at being pulled out of a dream of he and Alex flying through the stars in a spaceship made entirely of iridescent glass like the fragment he still can’t quite crack.

“We should talk about this,” Max gestures from Michael sleeping on the floor to Isobel’s pod. “We can’t hold a 24/7 vigil just the two of us. People will notice.”

“I could move the airstream out here.” Michael voices a thought he’s half had ever since he bought the airstream. “Who’s going to question the town drunk getting fired from the junkyard and squatting on some abandoned mine land?”

“We can’t risk it. The kind of people who would question that are exactly the kind we can’t afford to have interested in us.” Max hands Michael a cup of coffee. “I think we should seal it.”

“No way. Not a fucking chance Max. We’re not leaving her in here alone.”

“She’s already in here alone, Michael!” Max looks like he’s on the verge of tears. “Can _you_ feel her? Because I can’t. Even when I touch the pod, it’s like a faint echo.”

“And if she… hatches?” Michael winces at his own word choice.

“Then we’ll know.”

Michael stares at him incredulously. “And if the pod wipes her, like she was very specifically afraid it would do? You think you’ll feel her then?”

“Yes.”

“Forgive me if I don’t jump on the trust train. You’re a cop, don’t you have some kind of surveillance equipment or something?”

Max looks caught out and then thoughtful and Michael feels the same quick flash of triumph he always gets when he one ups his sort-of-brother. “I can’t use anything official, but we could probably cobble something together. You’re the tech genius, I’ll get you some hardware, you figure out how to keep the feed safe.”

Michael bit his lip, hesitating for a moment before saying. “I have an idea, but you’re not going to like it.”

Max catches on quicker than Michael expected, confusion morphing to suspicion and then resignation. “His father…”

“Alex wouldn’t tell his father to stop drop and roll if he was on fire.” Michael kicks free of his nest of blankets and rises to his feet. He can’t quite take even this conversation seriously when Max is towering over him like this.

“You’re right.” Max says, running a hand though his hair. “I don’t like it. But I started this when I saved Liz so… Maybe what I like doesn’t matter right now.”

“The woman you love was dying right in front of you.” Michael is still furious at Max for a lot of things, but he’s been thinking a lot about what Max asked in the desert and it’s brought everything Max does around Liz Ortecho into a new light. “If it had been Alex? Yeah, I would have done every fucking thing I could to save him.” He shifts uncomfortably. “When you love someone, you don’t think about the risks.”

Max flushes. “Yeah.”

“But that’s why we need each other. Because there are risks, a lot of risks. So if you ask me not to tell Alex, I won’t.”

“No, you should.. you and Iz should be able to tell the men you love the truth. You deserve to be loved for every part of you, not just the human act.”

“When did you become such a sap?”

“Fuck off, Michael.”

Michael laughed. “It’s a good look on you. Just hope Liz realizes what she’s missing.”

Max stiffens at the mention of Liz. It’s a new things he’s been doing since the night of the drive in. Michael didn’t really connect the dots until now. There were other things on his mind back then.

“What happened with Liz? You get all weird whenever I mention her, yet she’s fighting tooth and nail to save your sister who, by the way, murdered her sister, just because she doesn’t want to watch you suffer.” Michael can see the muscle in Max’s jaw twitch and knows he should drop it, but he’s sick to death of dropping things. “You do know she’s in love with you, right?”

“Just leave it, Michael.”

“No! We keep ‘leaving it’ and then everything goes to _shit_.” He points at Isobel’s pod. “Exhibit A.”

“She doesn’t want anything to do with me!” Max explodes. “And it is _killing_ me. But I have a job to do and a family to protect and so I can’t talk about this with you. So fucking leave it alone. I don’t need Michael Guerin guardian angel of failed Evans relationships swooping in to save me.”

“Clearly.” He doesn’t roll his eyes, but it’s a near thing.

“Just… look after Isobel. I’ll be back after my shift.”

Michael lets him leave before sinking back down onto his nest of blankets. “I hope you are enjoying your pod nap, Iz. Reality is the fucking worst.”

…

True to his word, Max returns ten hours later with a bag full of various cameras and sensors he thinks they can cobble into a security system. They spend a companionable hour working in near silence mounting cameras and motion sensors through the cave. When the hardware is in place, Max all but kicks Michael out. “Go shower, you smell rank.”

Michael claps him on the shoulder and does as he’s told. He texts Alex on his way back to his truck. **Can you come by tonight, we should talk.**

It takes him longer than usual to get back to the airstream from the mines. He stops at the crashdown for takeout and ends up running into an exhausted looking Liz. They talk around Isobel’s cure, but Michael gets the distinct sense that Liz is feeling every bit as pressured today as yesterday. He can’t decide if he finds this almost endearing, or if he takes offense at the fact she doesn’t seem confident the pods will protect Isobel for as long as it takes.

“Has anyone told Noah?” Liz asks quietly as Michael is turning to leave. The crashdown is nearly empty, just a couple of grey-hairs in the back corner.

“No.” Michael meets her accusing gaze and shrugs helplessly. Should they have told Noah years ago? Probably. But he can’t quite imagine he or Max or both of them outing Isobel to her husband while she’s lying unconscious in an Alien pod, vulnerable and probably afraid. It wouldn’t be right.

“He came by the hospital today to see her.”

Fuck. Of course he had. Noah loves Isobel and yesterday she was coughing up blood in the middle of his declaration of endless support. “What did you tell him?” She already told Valenti, so he’s pretty sure nothing would surprise him at this point.

“Kyle made up something about her being severely immunocompromised and needing to be on complete isolation until we figure out what triggered her yesterday. He might have believed it, but I don’t know how much time it will really buy us.”

He chooses not to comment on ‘us’ even though his knee jerk reaction is still to reject it. Liz isn’t one of them. She’s an outsider. She always will be. “Noah’s a smart guy. I’d say, twenty four hours tops before he’s coming in with a dozen cases where the spouse was allowed access despite the patient being severly immunocompromised.”

“Kyle said pretty much the same thing.” Liz nods.

“Work fast then.” Michael flashes her his teeth in a smile that’s really more of a challenge.

“I could use your help, you know.”

“I already gave you everything I have.”

“Maybe, but don’t think I’ve forgotten who outscored me on every AP test in high school.”

Michael can feel his cheeks heating up the way they do when anyone besides Max or Isobel remembers that he’s clever. Most of Roswell has bought his town drunk and handiman act all too easily. It’s not like he has a family to keep the memory of his past or a pride in his abilities alive for him. And Michael was all too happy to sink from the public eye. “I can’t exactly come work with you at the hospital.”

Liz rolls her lips in thought. “I’ll figure something out. Just be there in the morning.”

“Yes ma’am.” He gives her a sassy salute and steps out into the rapidly cooling evening air.

Alex is sitting on one of the lawn chairs out front of the airstream by the time he arrives. His crutch is leaning against the chair and it’s only seeing it that makes Michael realize Alex didn’t have it the last time he saw him. He wonders if this means that Alex is adjusting to his prosthetic and then realizes, smile spreading acrosshis face, that he doesn’t have to wonder about Alex anymore: he can just ask.

“Though for a minute you weren’t going to show.” Alex says as soon as Michael steps out of the truck.

“I do live here.”

“Some nights at least.” Alex raises an inquisitive brow.

“Checking up on me Manes?”

“Missing you, actually.” He says it with a bluntness that sort of bowls Michael over. They’ve never really said it. Their affection has always been communicated as much by the things they _don’t_ say as the things they do.

“I spent the night with Isobel. Max is a worrier, wanted to make him get some sleep. Figured that was the best way.”

Alex’s expression flashes from earnest to concerned and back again. “She’s still…?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Sorry, not trying to pry.”

Michael sinks into the other lawn chair and places his bag of food on his lap. “I want to tell you everything. It’s just… I haven’t eaten since breakfast.”

Alex still looks too serious, but he nods something like understanding and gestures for Michael to eat. “You’re right, we’ve got a lot to talk about. You eat, I’ll tell you about my dickhead father.”

The burger is lukewarm and the onion rings have congealed into one solid mass in their baggy, but Michael devours every crumb as Alex tells him about digging in the dark web to find something to give him leverage over Jesse and how he found Project Shepherd and all of the reasons Jesse couldn’t afford to have Project Shepherd come to light. Michael interrupts only once, when Alex tells him that he went to his father’s secret bunker to confront him, and it’s just to offer Alex a beer. He has a feeling they will both need one if Jesse’s bunker contains any of the things Michael fears it will.

“Yeah, thanks.” Alex says, smiling up at Michael as he rises to grab some beer from the fridge.

It takes everything in Michael not to lean down and press a kiss against that smile, but this is not the right time for that. Even if this feels like it might be his last chance.

Alex continues his story, raising his volume loud enough that Michael can hear. The junk yard has been deserted for hours, so there’s little chance of anyone happening by before the morning. “My dad is not a computers guy. Learned what he had to to keep his job and clearly doesn’t do the recommended professional development. It was like cracking into a teenager’s Facebook.”

Michael can hear the smile in Alex’s voice. He hasn’t seen this side of Alex, the carefree triumphant side, since they were seventeen. Since the day Jesse Manes shattered Michael’s hand. It makes his heart ache. He also can’t suppress the creeping tendrils of fear as Alex’s story gets closer and closer to the secret Michael needs him to know, but equally needs him to hear from Michael.

“I was expecting a few pictures and hoping for some evidence that he’s still actively pursuing a project that’s been cancelled for almost a decade but there was so much more. It’s going to take months to comb through it and separate the obvious bullshit from the things that might actually be worth keeping.”

Michael hands a bottle to Alex, marveling at the fact his hands aren’t trembling. He feels like they should be. His whole body feels cold. “You planning to take up the family crusade, Manes?”

Alex rolls his eyes. “Not remotely, but I figure if there’s anything particularly juicy we should at the very least leak it on the dark web to watch the alien chasers lose their collective minds, don’t you?”

Michael forces himself to laugh instead of vomit. Alex doesn’t know, he _can’t._ Because Alex has hurt Michael plenty of times, but he would never be deliberately cruel, and Michael can’t believe Alex would ever purposefully put him in danger.

“You’re going to love this part,” Alex continues, oblivious to Michael’s inner struggle for calm. He told me you were an alien and that you’ve been using me to help you infiltrate the human race for the last decade.” Alex can barely finish the sentence for laughter.

Michael feels like someone sucked all the heat and oxygen out of the room.

“I mean, the man is insane. I know he’s homophobic. He’s always hated that part of me and you by extension. But ‘don’t give in to the gay, son, the fate of humanity rests on your could-be-a-nice-hetero-if-you-just-tried shoulders’ is a new level of crazy. He kept going on about how he was protecting me. I wanted to tell him that I enjoyed letting you probe me.” Alex dissolves into laughter.

It takes a minute for Alex to realize Michael isn’t laughing along. When he does, he sobers instantly, brow pulling into a worried furrow. “Guerin?”

Michael stands abruptly and take a few steps away. He has to tell Alex - needs it like he needs oxygen and acetone. “He’s not as crazy as you think, Alex,” Michael says, not turning to see how his words land on Alex’s face.

“Pretty sure you haven’t been trying to infiltrate the human race from your airstream, Guerin.” Alex sounds pissed, like he can’t understand why Michael can’t just join his bubbly joy and laugh at their shared boogeyman’s crackpot alien theories.

Michael takes a deep breath, gathering whatever tattered threads of courage he still possesses, and turns to face Alex. “No, I haven’t been trying to take down the human race. Mostly, I’m too busy just trying to pass as one of you.”

He knows the exact moment the meaning of his words sinks in because Alex’s expression goes from low level pissed to actual, visceral anger. “What the fuck are you even talking about?”

“I’m an alien.” It’s almost funny how easily the words fall now that he’s finally telling Alex the truth. “The 1947 crash was real. We were in stasis for about fifty years. We don’t know anything about where we come from, but Alex the technology is amazing. So far ahead of earth. If we could just figure it out, adapt it—“

“We?” Alex’s voice is choked, like he can barely spit out that one syllable.

Michael stops mid-sentence. Fuck. “Me, Max and—“

“Isobel.” Alex finishes for him. His eyes are still guarded, but there’s a ghost of a smile on his lips. “I always wondered what connected you. Didn’t come anywhere close to this though. Jesus, Guerin. If you’re fucking with me right now...”

“I’ve wanted to tell you since that night you gave me your brother’s guitar.”

“But?”

“It’s not just my secret. We agreed a long time ago the only way to stay safe was not to tell anyone, ever.”

“Okay. I can accept that. So why…?”

“Why now?”

Alex nods.

“A dozen stupid little reasons, and I’ll tell you all of them, but the only one that matters is I love you and I can’t keep expecting you to love me back when you don’t even know who I am.”

“Michael...”

“I know, I fuck up everything I touch and I’m a criminal and the town drunk and I won’t ever be good enou—“

Alex’s lips are hard against his. There’s anger and desperation in the way Alex’s tongue demands entrance. Alex’s hands are gripping Michael’s biceps hard enough to bruise. Their bodies are pressed together and back against the wall of the airstream. The force of Alex throwing himself into Michael is definitely going to leave marks.

It’s the best thing that has happened to Michael in his life.

He buries his fingers in Alex’s short dark hair and opens to his questing tongue, surrendering to the onslaught of sensations. He can feel his powers bubbling up, racing over his skin and begging for release. For once, he doesn’t try to lock them back down, just lets them flow through him, charging the atmosphere around them.

He can feel his energy pulling close, wrapping around Alex in a protective shield, lifting Alex just enough to ease the pressure on Alex’s severed leg from his prosthetic.

“How many hands do you have?” Alex gasps between heated kisses.

Michael lets his hands begin to roam at that, sliding over Alex’s chest, over his firm stomach, until they finally find their home in the back pockets of Alex’s jeans, cupping his ass and pulling their bodies closer together. A tiny rational voice in his mind reminds him they were talking before Alex tackled him, but Michael ignores it. Talking is severely overrated when Alex’s clever fingers are working at Michael’s belt and he can feel Alex’s arousal though two layers of denim.

“We should probably move this inside,” he breathes against Alex’s lips before diving in to taste him again.

Alex moans in response, but stops trying to loosen Michael’s pants in favor of pulling him towards the trailer door.

…

“Well, that is not how I imagined this going.” Michael murmurs staring at the ceiling, lips brushing against a stray lock of Alex’s hair.

“Is that a complaint Guerin?” There’s something tentative in Alex’s tone, but he doesn’t move from where he’s draped across Michael’s chest.

“Nope. Just thought there’d be more talking, some justifiable anger from you, maybe some begging on mine...”

“Well that was the plan,” Michael can feel Alex’s smile against his skin. “But then someone started feeling me up with his mind, and I may have lost focus.”

Michael shakes his head, disbelieving smile growing on his lips. “You have no idea how hard it is not to do that every time you’re around me.”

Alex turns his head just enough to plant a wet sloppy kiss between Michael’s pecs before settling back over his heart. His arms tightened briefly around Michael’s ribs as if he’s worried Michael might escape. “We’re not done talking about this. But I’ve had a long fucking week. Can we just sleep?”

“Yeah. I would really like that.” Michael uses his powers to pull a blanket over them both and flip off the light.

“Could get used to that,” Alex murmurs.

“Good.”

Michael lies awake for a long time, listening to the quiet snuffle of Alex’s snoring and trying to hold on to this moment. There were many things they needed to discuss. Project Shepherd sounds like everything Michael, Max and Isobel have ever feared. He needs to know everything, doesn’t know if Alex will share it - unsanctioned operation or not, it’s still military intelligence. He wants to share things with Alex too, the pods, and his bunker – although he fears what Alex will think when he realizes that Michael has spent the last decade trying to find a way off this planet. Maybe Alex isn’t the only one who runs.

They have time, though. Jesse Manes is gone, Project Shepherd is dead, and Alex is here. For now, that’s more than enough.


End file.
